Dogecoin's strength is its community and the fact that for so many years people have simply started to trust it.
I do agree that the DOGE community is one of the best crypto communities I have seen so far. They are very welcoming and accepting of other technologies and people, while other communities tend to be very toxic.
Also the people's knowledge about DOGE and number of places where is accepted is much bigger than other, much better technologically developed coins. It is likely that this will change over time, but I am sure that it will not change over the next few years.
The most important aspect of DOGE is that people actually use it to send tiny amounts back and forth, and it has been like that for years, since the very beginning.... this is what crypto should be used for but generally isn't.
Security wise it's not the best coin due to the low hashrate, but when you transact in very low amounts it's a great network to use because the transactions are fast and near free.
Exactly, I forgot about microtransactions. DOGE's popularity is also due to the fact that it is the second, after Bitcoin, coin used in faucets, which are very often the first form of use by new users. Also through this, exchanges implement DOGE in the first place, even before DASH and XRP as the main exchange pair. That is why, though the low volume, the DOGE price reacts as one of the first when the sentiments on the market are changing. I also think that thanks to huge community, the price of DOGE will grow much more steadily than Alts, which are only used by whales and speculators.